A Lot Of Nothing Must Add Up To Something

As a Connecticut man named John Stotler observed on Facebook this week, it's tough for journalists to keep writing stories about the national stalemate and shutdown. How many times can you write, "No, nothing happened today. Nope. Sorry," before you feel like a minstrel of stagnation?

And yet. And yet. Maybe we have given short shrift to other things that don't happen. Maybe we should report on them more.

For example, last week, no city-owned car in Hartford plowed into anything or was plowed into. At no time during the past week did two city officials drag race at 3 a.m. in their city-owned cars or pull up to law-abiding citizens and moon them from the passenger side of their city-owned cars. In general, I think you'd have to say that the many city officials who take home city-owned cars in Hartford were remarkably well-behaved last week.

Another thing that did not happen was the offer of any visual proof in a lawsuit by a woman who claims that the first selectman of Stonington sent her a picture of his private parts using a town-owned Blackberry.

Thanks to excellent reporting by David Collins of The Day, we know that First Selectman Ed Haberek, a Democrat, is in the unenviable position of running for re-election (against a devout Christian) while under the cloud of an unresolved accusation that he Blackberried his naughty bits and sent them to a woman who now claims the memory of them (the bits) causes her migraine headaches.

Lawsuits of this kind usually rely heavily on the pictures themselves, but the woman claims she deleted them. Her attempts to get them from anywhere else have so far failed, pushing this story into the Stotlerist realm of Nothing right where you would expect Something.

Meanwhile Haberek's Republican opponent is the felicitously named Glee McAnanly, whose first job out of (Christian) college, she told the Stonington Patch, was traveling around the country with a singing group. (A glee club?)

Glee also figured prominently in another recent story about what did not happen. Wealthy capitalist Robert Burton told the Connecticut Post that he did not take pleasure in being proven right. Burton had a massive public tantrum when UConn hired football coach Paul Pasqualoni without consulting him, even though he had given $3 million to the football program and more than $7 million to the university.

Pasqualoni has now been fired after an 0-4 start. Burton said he "told the university from Day One" that Pasqualoni was the wrong guy, adding, "I don't glee about it." (Glee is not normally an intransitive verb. Or a first name.)

In September, Burton named UConn President Susan Herbst to the seven-member board of directors of his company Cenveo, which makes me think that failure by UConn to consult adequately with Burton can now be added to that list of Things That Do Not Happen.

Another thing that does not happen is eating and drinking in funeral homes, but the state has formed a task force — this happens a lot! — to study legalizing it. That would tragically disrupt a beautiful Irish custom of keeping liquor out in the parking lot so that mourners can wander out to the car for a nip. Anyway, it's a wake, not a Hometown Buffet. Can't people ever stop eating?

A thing that did not happen — yet — is the banning of roosters from Bristol. Cocks crow in the Bible and Shakespeare, but in modern life, people don't like that. Bristol is considering a ban on roosters, but the opposition has countered that government has no place regulating fowl. It's practically in the Constitution!

One Bristol rooster owner, writing online, insisted that her cockerel could not be heard over the other city noises during the day but that, when it went through a period of crowing in the wee small hours, she put the rooster in a dog crate and put the crate in the basement.

"So THAT is what comes down to Neighbors working out issues like civilized ADULTS," she concluded.

Of course, people behaving like civilized adults is just one more thing that doesn't happen. And I don't glee about that.

Colin McEnroe appears from 1 to 2 p.m. weekdays on WNPR-FM (90.5) and blogs at http://courantblogs.com/colin-mcenroe/. He can be reached at Colin@wnpr.org.